Dual Trigger Extras: Incontri
by Chronic Guardian
Summary: No matter how many interviews they go through, there's still so much more going on in a cyborg's head than the charts and metrics will ever show.


**Dual Trigger Extra: Incontri  
**

By Chronic Guardian

 **File 1: Terra**

 _Author's Note: The following pieces are based on an adapted "Interview with a Cyborg" template written by Professor Voodoo on the Cyborg Central Gunslinger Girl fan boards. Credit where credit is due._

}§{

The door opened gracefully. It wasn't just smooth or practiced, it glided back and forth like a wavering candle as it admitted the girl into the room. She turned just long enough to ensure the door came to a silent rest before releasing the handle and turning to again face the room's only occupant: a man sitting at a desk.

For a moment, she entertained the thought that he was somehow related to Dr. Bianchi, as if the job of mental examination was genetically linked. Of course, the closest connection her mind could eek out was the mirroring opposition of the two men. This one had darker hair and lighter skin; he wore big, round glasses that flashed in the room's fluorescent light and made his eyes seem small and squinty; even the patch of beard beneath his tight lips was thinner and more pointed than the man he should have been.

The girl allowed her head to tilt, wondering why this time it wasn't Bianchi. A few easy answers to the question bounced at the back of her mind, insisting they knew the truth. Perhaps Bianchi had finally had enough of the Agency, or maybe they didn't think he was doing his job well enough.

But even as the possibilities bubbled up, she gently pushed them back down into her subconscious. In her experience, it was better to sort through the actual people hiding behind the first impressions.

The man at the desk looked up for a brief moment, poking at her with a sharp flick of his eyes before again consulting the page in front of him and removing a pen from his breast pocket.

"Hello," he said, without much friendly conviction. The girl understood it to mean the greeting was mandatory and that the man would rather get right down to business. She understood. She didn't like being forced to say things she didn't mean either.

"This is an interview that will be used strictly for internal purposes," he continued. His voice fell in a measured drone as he moved through the script. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant voice, but it sounded tired, like a drooping lily that hadn't been given enough water. "I will ask you fifteen questions and you will answer them to the best of your abilities. Before we start, is there anything I should know; comments, questions, or concerns?"

His eyes shifted up to look at her again as he finished the last line. Like his voice, his eyes seemed like they would be good eyes when they weren't being used with her.

"...May I have a seat?"

The man paused for a moment, then frowned as his gaze flicked between the four-legged stool in front of the desk and the girl. "Yes, yes of course," he said quickly. "I apologize, I didn't realize you needed—"

"It's alright," she assured him. Inside, she wondered why she would even dare to play tricks like that with him. He thought she needed his permission now. That was partly true, there were things that she wouldn't do if she knew she wasn't allowed. Sitting on the stool wasn't one of them. At times, killing people wasn't either.

The room was the same setup in Bianchi's office. In fact, had she not walked there herself she might have mistaken the man for a squatter in the good doctor's place. There were the same boxes full of books and folders, little pictures on the wall framing people she would never know, and that large mirror taking up almost the entire left side of the room. The girl looked at it, matching eyes with her reflection and wondering what other eyes were joining in. When she was satisfied, she sat down and again addressed the man who wasn't Bianchi.

"There is one other thing I'd like to know though," she said. Usually, cyborgs weren't supposed to dictate the flow of the conversation. The girl considered herself a special case.

The dark haired man dipped his head and made a slight rolling motion with his fingers in response to her words..

"...How will you know if I lie?"

Again, the man paused. His eyes did not raise to meet hers. She looked to his hands for a response. They were still, not shaking. That was good, at least. She scanned the rest of his body, looking for signs of tension. His shoulders were a little stiff, but they'd been that way when she walked in. He wasn't afraid, just confused.

Finally, he nodded his head slowly and looked back at her. "Do you intend to lie to me?"

Part of her recognized that the question wouldn't work in any other setting than with a compliant subject. If she was going to lie, she could just lie about lying. Of course, in her case, it wasn't so much that she wanted to lie, just that it happened and no one seemed to notice. She was beginning to suspect they thought she was incapable of it. The thought was frightening.

Still, that wasn't what the man had asked. "No, signore," she said, giving a little smile. "I don't."

"Good," he acknowledged. His eyes drifted back to the paper on his desk and the question seemed to sink away into the floor. "Question one: Tell me your name and a little about your role in Section 2."

The girl nodded and wondered why they would need to ask such an obvious question. Perhaps it _was_ just a test to catch liars. The thought made her wary of the remaining fourteen questions. "My name is Terra," she answered, making sure not to speak too slowly. If her voice dragged, they might think there was something wrong with her conditioning. "I am a general purpose fratelli agent. I work with Signore Garamonde on assignments to neutralize armed dissension against the Italian government. My standard equipment is a Glock 17 handgun and OKC-3S bayonet. I am also commonly deployed with a Dragunov SVU, automatic variant, bullpup sniper rifle for heavy mid-to-long range combat. I have training in marksmanship, breaching maneuvers, interrogation techniques—"

"That's enough, thank you," the man held up a hand and made some notes on the paper in front of him.

Terra wanted to react to the sudden interruption, to say that they wouldn't know she was telling the truth unless she matched all the key details, but the part of her that was always waiting just behind the conditioning told her to let it go and push forward. "...Yes, signore."

Terra grimaced. This was not a good beginning.

"Now," the man said as he crisply lifted his pen from the paper. "Would you tell me a little about your conditioning?"

Terra's eyes flashed. She knew he caught it. This was her chance, this was the moment she could tell them. Before the other part of her could intervene, she grabbed the words and shoved them out of her mouth. "It's broken."

"Broken?" the man frowned. He seemed to do that a lot. "How do you mean, 'broken'?"

"I mean I don't..."

"You don't follow orders?" he cut in. His dark eyebrows were swooping down like two angry ravens about to fight over a kill.

"It's… hard to explain," she sighed, looking down at her hands. "The conditioning is supposed to stop us from thinking about the wrong things. It makes us listen to our handlers and do whatever the Agency asks us to. When we try to go against it, it hurts. It makes sure we feel wrong about things that are wrong."

The man leaned forward a little and squinted, as if looking through a microscope and trying to bring a preserved cell into focus. "And your conditioning doesn't do that? You don't feel—"

"I do!" Terra put in impatiently, but then winced. "I… I just… I'm sorry signore, I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Most cyborgs wouldn't," he allowed softly. The man nodded to himself and leaned back in his chair before consulting his papers.

"Are you making a note for reconditioning?" she asked him.

The sound of his pen scrawling across the page stopped, but he didn't look up. "...No," he answered at last, and finished his note.

"Signore," she addressed him gravely. "Please be honest: do you know when I lie to you?"

"You already asked that," he reminded her calmly. "I have a little girl at home about your age. She's sweet, but she still gets into mischief. Trust me, a father knows when a child lies."

Terra gave him an apologetic smile and brushed back her sandy bangs. "For both our sakes, signore, I think it would be better to acknowledge I'm not a child anymore."

The man blinked at the statement, then opened a drawer on his desk and lifted out some papers. He scanned through a few lines before lifting the document for her to see. "Is this you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

Terra stared back at a miniature picture of herself on a page with her name at the top and various fields marked out with her specifications. She didn't find anything new that Cyan hadn't told her already.

She nodded and waited for the next question.

"Do you know how old you are?" the man at the desk asked.

"Cyan and I agree to think I'm fourteen," she told him, wondering if this was a standard question for the interview. Did most cyborgs not know their age? Did most cyborgs even care?

The man looked back at the papers again and frowned. "But if you're not a child..."

Terra suddenly caught on to what he was wondering about. "I'm not an adult," she assured him. "I probably won't even grow out of this body. I didn't mean that. I meant I'm a cyborg, your daughter is not."

The man stroked his chin thoughtfully and consulted the picture again. Terra thought she caught a glimpse of something in his eye. "...I see."

They went into a respectful lull as the man continued to see and Terra patiently waited for him to want to see more. After waiting for a good minute or two, she decided it would be best to take matters into her own hands.

"Signore?" she prompted him.

The man twitched and flicked his eyes to and fro, as if coming out of a trance. "Mmm?"

"May we take the next question?"

"...Yes, yes, of course." He put the papers down beside the questionnaire and prepared to take notes again. Readjusting his posture, he cleared his throat and resumed the interview. "Next, question three: How do you feel about your handler? What is your relationship with him like?"

Terra silently noted that the age question had not thrown off the numbering; that still left twelve questions to wade through after this. Trying not to think about it, she tucked her shoulders closer and tried to figure out how to explain Cyan.

He wasn't a very open man. Sometimes she felt he was at odds with the Agency. If they were trying to get her to talk about him because they thought he was keeping secrets then she didn't really want to say anything either. But how would she know if that happened? Terra had never been very good at reading people, it wasn't what she'd been programmed for. On the other hand, the man interviewing her seemed like he wasn't used to the cyborgs just yet. Maybe he would let his guard down if she…

 _No._ Terra shook her head to herself. If she got caught trying to manipulate a medical staff member it wouldn't look good for Cyan.

"Terra?" the man at the desk prodded gently.

"He's a good man," she answered, as if nothing had happened. "He's stern, and strong, and he's always trying to help me get better at my job. I think he's a good fit for the Agency."

The man's head bobbed as his pen weaved circles and lines across the page that probably only he could read. "Good, and how do you feel about him?"

"...I like him a lot."

"Would you go so far as to say love, even?"

Terra blushed. "It… it's not like that, signore," she said, trying to not sound too rushed. People usually thought you had something to hide when you rushed. "I just… I guess that's not a very good answer. All of us cyborgs like our handlers, at least a little. I just… I don't know how to say we're different."

"Are you different?"

Terra paused with her mouth open and slowly closed it. She should have seen the question coming. Didn't everyone want to think they were different, special? In a way, that just made them the same. Really, she was a general purpose agent who did her jobs and didn't ask questions for how to go above and beyond. They had generic written all over—

 _That's not what he asked_ , she stopped herself. _He only asked if your relationship is different than any of the other girls_.

Terra sighed and shook her head. "...I don't know."

"Thank you, Terra," the man concluded, as if she'd given him an actual answer. "Next: What are your favorite kinds of missions?"

Pushing down the sick feeling that they'd just cut off a crucial thought, Terra nodded and tried to comply. "I'll do anything, really. Whatever needs to be done, I'll find a way to do it. Cyan taught me to be ready for anything."

A slight smile played at the interviewer's lips. "Yes, but do you have a favorite?"

There was a squeeze in her chest and she knew they were pushing on something the other side of her didn't want to discuss. She tried to think about her missions, about the places she'd been, the feel of the trigger under her finger, the smell of lead, hot holes in warm flesh, breaking bones, death—

"...No," she said simply.

"I see," the man murmured.

It was a good response, the kind of thing you could say just to fill space and move on. Some things in the world didn't need to be lived constantly, they only needed to be glimpsed.

"Following that, what kind of missions do you dislike?"

"Signore?"

"Yes?"

"Have you ever seen more of a person than you wanted?" she asked in a measured voice, carefully trying to find just the right words for the thought. "Have you ever had to just watch and get closer even though you knew something awful was going to happen, because it was your job to keep looking and not look away?"

The man huffed up a single wry chuckle as his fingers rubbed his pen back and forth between eachother. "...Yes, Terra. I believe I have."

"Then you know the missions I dislike."

The answer was followed by a beat of uncomfortable silence before the interviewer cleared his throat. "Question six," he said. "How do you like life in the SWA dormitory?"

"It's nice," her mouth moved automatically while her mind tried to figure out how they could be less than halfway through. She'd never liked interviews. Being stuck in a room alone with someone and not being allowed to leave felt dangerous, wrong even. She missed her weapons. Who was on the other side of the mirror? Her mouth kept going. "The windows face the sunrise over the Apennines, and I have plenty of room to keep my equipment and prepare for work. I'm allowed to keep a small wardrobe and Cyan sometimes gets me clothes for special missions. Someone down the hall, one of the other girls, I think, she bakes often so it always smells nice. It feels… safe."

"Safe?"

 _Safe?_ Terra blinked. Who said that? Was it her? Was that really how she felt? "Uh..."

"Never mind," the man waved it off. "We'll move on to the next question."

Terra was beginning to feel the man didn't know how to do his job.

"Seven," the man pronounced. "Do you get along with your room-mate?"

"I think we get along alright." _Better than the other girls do with her, anyway,_ Terra added silently. "Lauro originally wanted Elsa to room alone, so some of us thought she might have problems."

"Does she?"

Again, Terra had the feeling that the man's questions were creeping under a sacred trust she'd established. Elsa didn't like talking. Terra felt that part of that was what Lauro said and the other part was what Elsa thought Lauro wanted. They'd made the best of it though. Terra never disturbed her roommate with so much as a "goodnight" after that first evening and Elsa never prodded into Terra's broken conditioning. Neither of them had much in the way of personal belongings and they both did their part to keep the room clean. Over all, Terra thought it was fair to say she could have done worse.

"...She's a cyborg, like the rest of us," she answered at last. Yes, that was the best way to put it. "She does her job and goes to bed on time. I don't think she's ever kept me up late." _Although she has woken me up early once or twice…_

"Good, I'm glad that's working out," the man said, nodding. "Now, question—"

 _Glad it's working out…_ Terra echoed in her head, trying to see if it felt any less hollow there.

She frowned. It didn't.

"Signore?"

He looked up, a little put out that she had broken the flow. In her head, she apologized and assured him this was necessary. "...Yes?"

"Remember when I asked if you knew when I lie to you?"

He didn't look happy to be reminded. "Yes, I remember."

"I think you should know that even if you can't tell when I lie, I can tell when you do."  
His eyebrows knit together; he probably thought it was a challenge.

Terra sighed. "You don't have to say things you don't believe," she explained. "You don't have to pretend to care about me."

"...Question eight," the man said pointedly. Terra noted that he didn't challenge her observation. Perhaps he felt it would weaken his position. "How do you like the dining hall? Do you have a favorite food?"

For once, the question didn't seem to need any additional thought. Terra smiled and went right into it. "The dining hall does what it's supposed to, it makes food and it serves it on time. As for favorites, Cyan likes seafood."

The interviewer closed his eyes and rolled his fingers. It seemed like an odd place in the interview to ask for more. Perhaps they were looking for comments to pass to the culinary staff?

"He also like it when we get English dishes, his favorite is—"

"Terra?"

"—Shepherd's pie. Yes, signore?"

"What about you? What are your favorites?"

"Whatever Cyan's having."

"Of course..." the dark haired man didn't look particularly thrilled with the answer, but he let it stand.  
It briefly occurred to her that not all cyborgs took lunch at the range. Of course, taking meals outside the dining hall wasn't quite standard practice for anyone, Cyan had to make special arrangements to make sure she got as much time to practice as possible. She always made sure the dishes made it back afterward, so the it had all worked out so far. Really, she wondered why she didn't see more people doing it.

On the other hand, she enjoyed having lunch alone with Cyan.

"Question nine, is there anything that grosses you out?"

"Signore," Terra gave a suppressed smile. "Is that really one of the questions?"

Something lit up in his eyes and for a moment they looked less tired. "I thought you said you could tell when I was lying?"

Terra checked herself and made a note to not be rhetorical with this man. "Yes, you're right..." she said, still holding the smile. "I was trying to give you an out. I'll be more straightforward then: do you _really_ want to ask that question to a combat cyborg?"

"It might reveal an abnormality in your conditioning," the man offered. "It might tell us something about your previous life, or give us an early warning sign about mental deterioration."

"...Signore," she said evenly. "I haven't had the luxury of being 'grossed out' by blood, brains, body fluids, or anything else. To me, the world just happens. It's frightening, and I hate it sometimes, but I don't feel 'gross'."

A glint of challenge twitched through the man's mustache. "So if you saw your handler, say, naked—"

"I have."

The man stopped short. Apparently he thought he'd been holding a trump.

"When dressing his wounds in a bathtub in Eastern Europe during the search for Dottore Estheim," Terra explained. "We were cut off from any other support, so I had to do it. The burns went down from here to here." She tapped the side of her own ribcage and thigh to demonstrate. "Cyan is in very good shape for a fifty year old man, by the way."

"I see..."

"...Are most cyborg's disgusted by their handler?"

"It was just an example," the man assured her. He shifted in his seat and refused to meet her eyes. "Ten: Is there one thing you would really like to do, but your handler won't let you?"

"Not really," she said wistfully, deciding to leave out that Cyan had ordered her not to interfere with Lauro de Sica's training methods. Cyan had his reasons. "Next?"

Surprisingly the man took the bait and didn't press for more. Perhaps knowing she was hiding something was enough.

Perhaps the man was still hung up on her answer to the previous question.

"Eleven: Where would you like to spend your next vacation? Have you been there before?"

"Vacation?" Terra gave him a tilted look.

The man sighed and made the rolling motion with his fingers again. "Time off, extended leave. When you're not on missions and you're not training, where would you like to be?"

"Is that what happens after we finish the Padania?"

"...I take it Cyan is a real slave-driver."

Terra shrugged and forced herself to not react to the insult. "Cyan is good at his job. When I have time off, I'm usually reading about our next assignment, or cleaning my gear, or—"

"—Talking with your roommate?"

Terra stopped. _No, not talking with Elsa,_ she thought. _Not yet._

"...To be honest, signore, I don't think there's anywhere else I really want to go. Everything I need is right here."

"Well..." the man shifted in his seat and tried to give her a warm smile. She felt like reminding him about what she'd said about lying. "If the answer changes, let us know."

Terra gave him a funny look, the one she liked to use with Cyan on the rare occasion that he made a joke. "Will I have to take this test again?" She hoped not. She would have to ask Cyan about it after she got out.

The man pursed his lips and shifted his eyes towards the mirror. Someone on the other side might be looking back at him. Sometimes, Terra wondered if cyborg eyes had been made to not see through the mirrors and only adults could do it; other times she convinced herself that they were just as blind as she was. "No, I don't think so," he said, adjusting his coat as he looked back at her. "But you can send your answer to my desk and I'll file it for you."

"Thank you, signore, I'll consider it." From what Terra could gather from Cyan, that was the more polite way of saying "No thank you."

The man's eyes moved back to the page and he smiled as he read the next question. "Tell me what you think of Triela's teddy bear collection; cool or geeky?"

Terra stared blankly back at the man.

"...Terra?"

"Triela has a… bear collection?"

"Yes, she collects teddy bears as gifts from her handler. What do you think of that?"

"What are teddy bears like?"

"...Perhaps we'd better move on to the next question," the man at the desk surmised. He seemed a little disappointed with her response. Terra filed it away and told herself to ask Cyan why the question was meant to be interesting; and, while she was at it, what exactly a teddy bear was.

"Thirteen: Do you have a favorite color?"

"...Red, I suppose," she answered. "The color of courage, valor, and love. It's a color that doesn't like secrets, it always must tell you exactly what it is."

"Very good," the man said without further pursuing the choice. She was surprised he didn't bring up that it was also the color of blood. Maybe he was making a note of it and planned on sharing it later. At any rate, they were almost through. Perhaps he'd grown tired of questioning her and was rushing to the end. That either meant he'd found what he was looking for or he thought he was wasting his time. Terra hoped it was the latter.

"Number fourteen. Aside from your handler, is there an adult, Agency or outside, that you admire?"

"Signore," she returned respectfully, "what do you think a machine like me values in life?"

"This questionnaire isn't for me, Terra," he reminded her curtly. Terra suspected the words were just as much for himself, though. "Are you saying no?"

"...I admired a man we killed once," she said after a moment. "His name was Leo Cristophe, and he was not afraid to pay for his crimes. There are many criminals in the world, Signore, and many of us realize what we are. But very few of us are willing to be punished for what we've done."

"...Fifteen," the man went on in a controlled voice after he finished his notes. In a way, it was odd that he hadn't pressed after the incident with Cristophe. Whatever he was curious about, apparently her explanation was enough. "If you could choose, how would you like to die?"

Terra took a deep breath and tapped her leg against the stool. She'd thought about dying before. It was hard not to when she dealt with it so often. Most people didn't seem ready to die, even though they did things that made other people want to kill them. It was like they thought it could happen to anyone else, that death stalked its victims on a whim.

For Terra, death had always seemed more like a consequence. In that respect, she fully expected to die, it was only a matter of where and when.

"...I think an unforeseeable malfunction would be best," she said at last. "No one gets blamed, nobody has to feel regret over not saving me. It's not their fault, so they can move on. Yes, that's probably best, I think."

"You know..." the man sighed and removed his glasses. He began cleaning them on his shirt as he shook his head and looked around the room. "...Most people want to die peacefully, in their sleep."

She stopped and frowned at him. "People die that way?" That was strange. Somehow she had assumed that people only died when they were killed.

The corners of the man's mouth tugged up into a sad smile as he put back on his spectacles and began finishing his notes. "Does that make you want to change your mind?"

"..."

"Terra?"

"...I don't think that's how cyborgs are meant to die, signore."

His mouth slowly opened, as if there were a secret sixteenth question he was meant to ask, before her closed it again and simply stared.

"But, yes…" she went on, giving him a sad smile of her own. She didn't want him to think she hated him, or that she was being difficult on purpose. Sometimes, it just seemed people didn't understand how different her world was from theirs. "I think that sounds nice."

}§{


End file.
